ad often noticed
that one of Mrs. Fleming's favorite ornaments was a golden locket with
one fine diamond in the center; she wore it suspended by a small chain
from her neck. As she sat talking to me she was playing with the chain,
when it suddenly became unfastened and the locket fell from it. In less
than a second it was hidden in the long grass. She looked for it in
silence for some minutes, then she said, gently:

"I have dropped my locket, Mr. Ford; is it near you? I cannot find it."

"Is it one you prize very much?" I asked.

"I should not like to lose it," she replied, and her face paled as
searching in the long grass she saw nothing of it.

I found it in a few minutes, but it was lying open; the fall had
loosened the spring. I could not help seeing the contents as I gave it
to her--a round ring of pale golden hair.

"A baby's curl?" I said, as I returned it to her.

Her whole face went blood-red in one minute.

"The only thing I have belonging to my little sister," she said. "She
died when I was a child."

"You must prize it," I said; but I could not keep the dryness of
suspicion from my voice.

"Mrs. Fleming," I asked, suddenly, "are you like Lance and myself,
without relations?"

"Almost," she replied, briefly.

"Strange that three people should be almost alone in the world but for
each other!" I said.

"I was left an orphan when I was four years old," she said. "Only Heaven
knows how I have cried out upon my parents for leaving me. I never had
one happy hour. Can you imagine a whole childhood passed without one
happy hour?"

"Hardly," I said.

With white, nervous fingers she fastened the gold chain round her neck
again.

"Not one happy hour," she said. "I was left under the care of my
grandmother, a proud, cold, cruel woman, who never said a kind word to
me, and who grudged me every slice of bread and butter I ate."

She looked at me, still holding the golden locket in her white fingers.

"If I had been like other girls," she said "if I had parents to love me,
brothers and sisters, friends or relatives, I should have been
different. Believe me, Mr. Ford, there are white slaves in England whose
slavery is worse than that of an African child. I was one of them. I
think of my youth with a sick shudder; I think of my childhood with
horror, and I almost thank Heaven that the tyrant is dead who blighted
my life."

Now the real woman was breaking through the mask; her face flushed; her
eyes s